In recent years, farming and slaughtering of birds and animals is conducted on a large scale in response to an increasing demand thereof. Thus, it is desired to fully automate each step of the process.
Slaughtering of a poultry carcass of livestock carcasses, can be divided into two main steps. One is a first slaughtering step in which killing to exsanguination, de-feathering and cleaning of the carcass is performed. The other is a second slaughtering step in which, after cooling the carcass having been processed in the first slaughtering step, the carcass is divided and deboned per each section thereof so as to produce carcass meat and by-products which are then packaged and stored.
In the first slaughtering step, killing to exsanguination, de-feathering and cleaning of the carcass is automated and requires almost no manual labor between the steps. In the second slaughtering step, separating of upper and lower portions of the carcass, separating of each portion such as leg meat and breast meat and deboning of the separated portions are increasingly automated. By this, the slaughtering processing is increasingly automated and thus the yield rate is improving in the same manner as the manual case.
Patent Document 1 proposes to automate an incision-making step which is needed as a preceding step prior to a deboning step by a deboning unit. As disclosed in Patent Document 1, many pieces of bone-in leg are suspended from a clamp unit and transferred to an incision-making station, and stopped at the incision making station so as to make an incision on the meat in a state that the bone-in leg is immobilized. At the incision-making station, the bone-in leg is precisely positioned and secured so that an incision knife can be moved precisely along a surface of the bones. This achieves a higher yield rate.
Patent Document 2 discloses an automated meat-separating means for separating bone-in leg of livestock animals such as a chicken. This means hangs the ankle of the bone-in leg from a clamp unit and transfers the bone-in leg. The means stops at a plurality of work stations and advances intermittently between the work stations. As shown in FIG. 9 of Patent Document 2, a moving path of the clamp unit is formed in a circle. The number of work stations are arranged along this circular moving path to conduct the incision-making step and the meat-separating step in which tendon is cut and the meat is removed.
The tendon is cut with use by means of a round cutter blade which is located in a vicinity of the transferring path of the leg meat and toward a traversing direction of the bone. The round cutter blade is moved closer to the bone-in leg so as to cut the tendon from the bone. As shown in FIG. 10 of Patent Document 2, in the meat-separation step, the leg meat is held at a bone part by a pair of separators (pressing plates), and the leg meat is removed from the bone by lifting the clamp unit. By detecting the position of the femur end, a precise position at which the removing of the leg meat ends can be determined. The muscle of the femur end is cut so that the leg meat can be completely separated from a femur head.
CITATION LIST
Patent Literature
    PTL 1    JP2001-149001A    PTL 2    JP2002/010732A